Romans 5

I learned a new word this past week. Permacrisis. It was harper collins word of the year last year. Words are picked that reflect and define the current culture in which we live

What word has best reflected the culture in which we live?

Permacrisis: An extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.

So if this is the world in which we live, that has been confirmed through the language in which we use, I am hoping for some kind of reprieve.

This morning we are going to talk about the peace of God.

And to be fair, the peace of God likely won’t rid the world of every crisis. It likely won’t remove every argument.

But it can deal with the permacrisis in your soul. It can deal with the permacrisis in you mind and heart.

God brings peace through Christ to the permacrisis

Romans 5:1 ESV

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peace is the culmination of everything we are looking for.

Again, that is a tall order but there is a case to be made that everything we are trying to do is to find peace.

In book 19 of the City of God, Augustine spends a fair amount of time stating that all of life is the attempt to find peace.

Maybe a moment on why I keep bringing up dead theologians. We need better anchors to our past.

Some would argue that life is really about pursuing your passion, about gaining new experiences, about finding your truth.

That it is about meeting your desires

But then he asks two questions

What if your plans are disrupted?

What if you actually obtain what you are pursuing?

Both have warnings but it is the second one where we have to spend some time

Because Augustine would tell us, on the way to peace, that our desires are really dressed in large amounts of fear.

That we may want something but once we get it our primary goal is to not lose it.

Eugene Peterson says when you become a parent you never draw an untroubled breath again

We bought our first house 5 years ago. I have not known more anxiety over normal house noises since that time. Every grown or knock around the house scares me to death.

If desire, or pursuing our highest goals is not the chief end of humanity?

If even that doesn’t go far enough, what can?

Augustine tells us that we are always pursuing peace. That even the events of war are simply, in the end, to find peace.

So if peace is the greatest thing we can attain to, when we see that Christ Himself offers peace between God and us.

Peace, the very thing you need, is the very thing that Christ offers.

The rest of the passage deals with the kind of peace that Christ offers.

Peace is the ability to access what you need to access without friction.

So that when we talk about what it means to grow in suffering, God has given us what we need in Christ.

If peace is the ability to live in access to what we need without friction

Since peace with God is possible, we are not defined by the sin on our worst day

Romans 5:6–10 ESV

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

look at the way this passage describes us.

While we were still weak.

Now while it may not be a lot of fun to look at us on our worst day, it is helpful because it shows the complete love of Christ

If you want to know how much you are loved, look to see who shows up on your worst day.

What we read from this passage is that Christ showed up on our worst day. He showed up when we were weak, and when we didn’t have whatever we could to go on.

He showed up when we were angry, when we said that thing we wished we never said. When we did that thing we wished we never did.

Christ showed up.

Christ’s death on the cross tells us that He showed up on our worst day.

But He doesn’t show up to say I told you so or to condemn us. Our sin has already condemned us. Christ shows up to save us from that.

If we are reconciled by Him, everything is different.

Look at this contrast and comparison between Adam and Jesus

Let’s look at Romans 5:17-18

Romans 5:17–18 ESV

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

Jesus is called the New Adam. He is making right everything the old Adam, the original Adam turned upside down.

Christ took the entirety of humanity,

Our weight

our history

our sin

brokenness

shame

evil

and is able to not just slow it down, not just stem the tide.

Christ removes it and makes us new.

He isn’t just the upcycled Adam.

He is the new Adam.

Because we are so used to our own ability to do or not do things, we train those ideas onto Jesus and think that He is slowing down the effects of sin. He is not. He is removing them through power. The Spirit of God is changing us through power. We are made new by the Father.

New Adam as it refers to Jesus is a callback to the original creation found in the garden of Eden so Christ reconciliation is also restoration of what we were originally intended to be

Panama Canal and the biggest problem it posed. 10 years. 48 miles. And this in the early 20th century. France and America built it. They endured swamps and lakes and rivers and yellow fever and and mountains and equipment failure and planning failure.

But do you know the biggest issue they had over that decade?

Landslides.

The biggest issue wasn’t finances or time or people or sickness or logistics, it was landslides.

There are a lot of things you can plan for, but when you are cutting into the sides of mountains and hills, you know you will hit a landslide, but you don’t know when.

So if you think of the 48 miles of the Panama canal, you don’t think of the mudslides from a century ago, you think of the engineering marvel it is. You think of the capacity to save 21 days of travel and 8000 nautical miles.

The canal is not famous because of it’s mudslides, it’s worse day, it’s famous because of what it became.

If Christ can overturn Adam, imagine what He can do with your past.

Imagine the new life He offers you.

Christ is not senile.

He is not just forgetting what has happened. Or what we have done

He is acting on it. He is remaking us.

Since Peace with God is possible, we are not defined by our suffering

Romans 5:3–5 ESV

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

The things that feel like will crush you cannot and they can become gifts.

Because suffering is not the only thing that we have access to. If he’s with God as possible, then a change is how we look at reconciliation. Because it’s not us trying to find our way forward, it has got offering a new way forward.

Romans 5:2–5 ESV

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

This is one of those verses that I often shake my head at.

It’s not just that we endure our sufferings.

We rejoice in them.

This is a high call as well.

But there is only one way that we are able to rejoice in suffering.

Suffering itself makes our world very small.

In fact Diane Langberg who writes on trauma and suffering from a Christian perspective says that there it is nearly impossible to seek healing while we are in the middle of suffering. Because we don’t have the perspective.

But if we know we have peace with God we know we have access to Him and Heavenly resources.

Suffering often feels like it’s the only resource we have. The only thing that we can reach out and touch or know is the sadness or brokenness around us. And it is around us.

But the peace of God is a promise that we always have access to God. We always have the resource of the King of Kings with us.

Because suffering is not the only thing that we have access to. If he’s with God as possible, then a change is how we look at reconciliation. Because it’s not us trying to find our way forward, it has got offering a new way forward.

In Christ we are invited to see that suffering is more than suffering. That it can even be a gift. It can change and form us. It can strengthen us. We just need a better imagination to see Christ’s resources within our suffering.

That there is more to see in suffering than suffering. There is a whole world of Christ’s peace.

last year there was a story about a hiker getting lost on Colorado’s highest peak. HE was lost for 24 hours and the rescue team finally caught up with him. He was completely fine but had lost his trail while hiking.

Notably, while he was lost he had been receiving numerous calls from the rescue team attempting to establish communication with him. Even though they kept trying to call, he did not pick up because he didn’t recognize the number.

He literally had the people who would be rescuing him calling him directly to get his coordinates. but he didn’t pick up because he didn’t know who it was who was calling him.

- When we fell lost, it seems like all we can see around us is lostness.

- But know that there is access to Christ through his peace.

- Christ Himself has removed the obstacles between God and us. His peace is the phone call that can get ignored because we don’t recognize the number.

- There is a strange gift in suffering. We can be led to hope. We can know that hope leads us to knowing that God has poured out His love through the Spirit.

- That is too important to miss

- It is too important to know and allow suffering to cover that up.

We have an opportunity to answer the call this morning, so to speak.

As we turn to communion, we will be able to see the peace that Christ offers

The love He offers

The new life He offers.

It is greater than the sin on our worst day

it is greater than our suffering

He makes new through His sacrifice and resurrection.

We practice that reality in taking the cup and the bread.

This is for those who have experienced that new life in Christ or who want to.

dialogue after service

prayer after service